Love or Hate Ikea

Ikea has blown up and is now in almost every city. I remember waiting for it when I was still in college, but of course Ikea didn’t open up until after I graduated. It was still only in the larger cities at the time. Now that I live in LA I can choose from a few to go to any time I want! Buy some nicely designed, but cheap furniture. It’s always fun to go to Ikea to look around. It’s hard to resist buying anything too with the maze they have set up there. Their furniture might be inexpensive, but sometimes not worth it because the quality is lower. It’s also not always earth-friendly either because people tend to throw the furniture out faster.

Currently we have a few pieces of Ikea furniture. A coffee table that two other couples we know have too! We didn’t plan it that way of course, but its a pretty nice coffee table actually. It’s got drawers on the side for storage and a glass top. More heavy duty than most of their furniture. we also have two black tables we have that we use as a corner desk. They only cost $30 each and are pretty versatile. One day we might get a real desk and maybe we can use those against the wall possibly. The edges have worn a bit but still pretty sturdy. Lastly we have two bookshelves and a laptop table. Ikea can be a good place to save money! Choose what you buy from there wisely though. It’s sad when furniture gets tossed away after being used only for a little bit. Not to mention it fills up our landfills faster.

Cheap but is it worth it?
The most expensive item from Ikea we have is the coffee table! You can tell its a bit better made than the tables and bookshelves. We intend to keep everything for as long as possible though. Eventually when they get old and unusable we’ll replace them with nicer stuff. For now saving a bit of money on our furniture works for us. We don’t need really nice furniture and we like how Ikea stuff looks.

Buy the better quality stuff
Ikea does use solid wood for their more expensive furniture. Most of their stuff is made from wood chips pressed together to create “wooden boards.” Aka mdf. I think the coffee table is made from real wood. It’s extremely heavy and you can see some of the wood grains. It also was at least twice as much as the other coffee tables. You can get some nicely designed stuff at Ikea if you look around.

Avoiding the landfill
With cheap furniture people tend to not take care of it as well. Also cheap furniture breaks much more quickly. If you buy Ikea furniture with the mentality of throwing it away soon after, then you’re wasting money and not being so earth-friendly. Shop carefully and only buy what you really want and try to keep it as long as possible.

Enjoy the experience
Part of the reason why people love Ikea so much is the shopping experience! They have all different scenes set up that you can explore. You can see what pieces work together and how it looks when fully put together. It’s a lot more fun than just going to a normal furniture store! Eat some Swedish meatballs too while you’re there!

Depending on your needs Ikea may be a great place for you to shop! We don’t think of this furniture as throwaway items and try to keep them as long as possible. We’re stretching out our money savings as much as possible.

Do you love Ikea or do try to avoid it? What’s your favorite part about it?

Post navigation

1 thought on “Love or Hate Ikea”

I should say I’m torn with this. I sometimes love them, and sometimes hate them. You know what’s more difficult at times? When the love and hate happen all at once. You know there are a lot of furniture to love from Ikea, and I hate it that at the point I saw a chair or a desk or a cabinet, I won’t be able to get it ASAP because I still have one at home? Isn’t that frustrating? Haha!Alivia Guo recently posted…Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Unveiled